American Girl, Museum of Work & Culture, merge fun and education in baking workshop

Sunday

Oct 29, 2017 at 5:11 PM

By Deborah E. Gauthier, Correspondend

WOONSOCKET, R.I. - Three years ago, popular doll-maker American Girl, based in New York with a store in Natick, created a doll special to the Blackstone Valley. The doll is Grace Thomas. In her story, she lives in a small town in the Valley, her grandparents run a bakery and she likes to bake.

Why did American Girl choose the Blackstone Valley? And what does that have to do with the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket, R.I. where 60 young girls and boys (in two sessions), most with American Girl dolls, gathered on a recent Saturday to make eclairs?

Because the Blackstone Valley is historically significant in New England and American Girl combines fun with education by creating dolls with backgrounds based on historic fact.

The Blackstone Valley is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. It’s where entrepreneurs in the 1800s harnessed the power of river water to run textile mills along those rivers, one of the most historic - the Blackstone.

Not only does Grace live in the Blackstone Valley, she lives near the man-made canal built by immigrants in 1825 along the Blackstone River and she bikes and walks her dog along the towpath where horses once trod, pulling barges and delivering goods between Worcester, Mass. and Providence, R.I.

In those days, the trip took two days.

Jobs created by those mills drew even more immigrants. People from around the world settled here, and here their descendants remain.

Donna Houle, special projects manager for the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council, was a consultant on Grace, the 2015 American Girl Doll of the Year.

"I read the three-book series for editorial purposes and added some historical input," she said. "They emailed me because the character Grace Thomas went on a fall train trip to celebrate her birthday and a Polar Express-type train trip where her grandmother's bakery prepared the Christmas cookies," Houle said.

"I run the fall train trip that we do in October and I'm very involved in the Polar Express train trip," she continued.

"They made a movie of Grace Thomas in 2015 that was set in the Blackstone Valley and Paris and the producer's assistant even called me from Budapest (which stood in for Paris) and asked me questions about our riverboat, the Blackstone Valley Explorer. They used a riverboat in the movie to represent our riverboat.

"It was all pretty exciting to be involved in the process from the beginning," Houle said.

The museum of Work and Culture had a baking event in conjunction with the American Girl train trip in 2015 and 2016 where the girls learned how to bake French pastries, and though the event this year did not include a train ride, the baking continued, "by popular demand" said Museum of Work and Culture Director Anne Conway.

The doll’s creation was an opportunity to highlight the museum, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, said Conway. The baking lesson is under the direction of Wright’s Dairy Farm pastry chef Paul Dulude. The farm and its bakery is located in North Smithfield, RI and the bakery is a strong supporter of the museum, Dulude said.

“Grace loved to bake in her story, so offering a baking workshop seemed like a natural programming fit,’’ explained Sarah Carr, assistant director of the museum.

The museum doesn’t have a kitchen, so Dulude explained the process of making dough, making a small batch in a mixer much smaller than the mixer used at the bakery, while the children watched. Like the magic of television, baked eclairs appeared and the the children filled the pastry with cream and frosted the tops with chocolate.

“This is hard,’’ said Addison Buchanan of Cumberland as she tried to squeeze cream into an eclair without making a mess. “I need chocolate,’’ said Sophia Young of Warwick, dipping her finger into a plop of chocolate that made it to the table instead of the eclair.

Each child received a baker’s hat and pink apron and went home with three eclairs they’d made themselves. In addition, they toured the museum following the lesson.